The Real Oregon

If you find yourself staying in Klamath Falls — a city with not a lot else to recommend it, except for the incredible high desert countryside that surrounds it — check out the Best Western Olympic Inn, which sits at the corner of Washburn Way and South Sixth Street.

Though it’s unremarkable on the outside, and located in a hellishly ugly fast-food suburb (across the street is Burger King and Office Depot), you’ll be pleasantly shocked when you enter the pine-paneled lobby, which is chock full of hunting and fishing lodge taxidermy: a wolf, a mountain goat, a black bear, even a cougar. Overstuffed leather chairs and sofas make this a place to linger and read a magazine.

Better yet: The free breakfast (6 a.m. to 10 a.m. in the lobby) includes biscuits and gravy.

Best of all: Every night at 8 p.m. the staff serves milk and cookies in the lobby. Not just cookies but fresh-baked cookies, whose aroma fills the building, tempting even the abstemious.

All rooms are non-smoking.

A little spendy at $150 a night for a room with two queens, but entirely worth it for the atmosphere.

• Sylvia Beach Hotel. On the beach — no, it’s not in “Sylvia Beach” — but in a part of Newport called Nye Beach, this place has been written up so many times in the national media you’ll feel like you’re staying in a national landmark. The rooms all have literary themes, from the black and gloomy Edgar Allan Poe room to the lacy Emily Dickinson room. Fun.

• The River House. On the Siuslaw River in Florence’s Old Town, this is a straight-up motel that’s got it exactly right: clean, comfortable and unpretentious rooms, with a nice view if you book on the river side, for a very reasonable price. Rubber duckies come with the room.

• Captain John’s Motel. In Charleston, this place is a little more downscale than the River House but still one of our favorites, perhaps because it’s right in the thick of things in this little waterfront town.

• Malheur Field Station. A little hard to explain if you haven’t been there, but the best place to stay in all of the Oregon desert. This is an academic field station that rents surplus rooms (They just about always have them) for next to nothing; in return you get very basic accommodations and the most amazing location you can imagine.

• Timberline Lodge. On the slopes of big old Mount Hood, the exterior of this old Arts & Crafts/WPA lodge was used in the Stanley Kubrick version of “The Shining.” On the inside, you’ll find lots of great art and plenty of atmosphere, and there’s little chance of being attacked by Jack Nicholson with his axe, even if the movie did frighten you out of your wits.